Community Engagement Strategy for Multifamily Occupancy with Ben Pleat

In this episode, Chris and Anne speak with Ben Pleat, the co-founder and CEO of Cobu. A technology platform designed to help multifamily marketers and owners drive resident satisfaction and community engagement, which in turn boosts occupancy and retention rates. Pleat shares that the genesis of Cobu was inspired by his mother's feeling of isolation despite living in a luxury Manhattan apartment building, revealing the widespread issue of loneliness. The conversation thoroughly explores how Cobu leverages user-generated content (UGC) and community building—including events and neighbor-to-neighbor interactions—to foster an authentic "vibe" for properties, which is then used to increase website conversion rates and improve SEO and AI search results. The guests and Pleet also examine broader marketing trends, such as the shift toward authenticity in branding and the impact of AI on consumer search behavior, emphasizing the importance of a positive, consistent resident experience.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:05

Hi everyone, and welcome to the apartment department, the podcast for multifamily marketers by multifamily marketers. Very excited. We have Ben Pleat with us today. He is the co-founder and CEO of KOBU, and KOBU is um basically allowing communities to drive resident satisfaction through uh resident engagement, uh, which is a really big topic right now. We're gonna dive today into how we started the company, um user-generated content, why resident satisfaction is so important right now. So, Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Will you go ahead and tell us a little bit about yourself and your journey to starting KOBU?

SPEAKER_00 0:47

Yeah, thanks Ann and Chris for having me. I've been a fan of the podcast for some time, honored to be on. Um, yeah, I'm one of the co-founders here at KOBU, which quite literally stands for community building. We basically help multifamily marketers and owners build a really strong defensive community to attract, engage, and retain residents. So it's really around you know turning your apartment community into an occupancy driving engine for you. So one of the kind of genesis points of starting KOBU was yes, I kind of come from a property management background. I started my career at leasing, so that was definitely very formative on the kind of professional side of things. But actually, it's much more of a personal reason that sparked the genesis of Kobo, which was seeing my mom achieve her American dream, which was to move to Manhattan. She immigrated from Siberia to the US and always wanted to live in the city, New York City, in her case. And about this point, 12 years ago, she moved to an amazing apartment building in Lower Manhattan. It was, you know, kind of dream come true for her. Everyone was so happy for her. My brothers and I would visit a lot. And basically, whenever whenever we'd visit, we'd see her cooped up alone, you know, in this nice apartment building with a roof deck, all the amenity spaces. She couldn't meet a single neighbor despite being, you know, a really big extrovert, being really, really social. And that was really tough on her. It was really isolating. And you know, we looked into the issue and realized this was about 61% of the US was feeling that level of isolation and loneliness. This is all predates COVID. Obviously, COVID didn't make it better. And the data showed, and this was Cigna data, this was data from the US Surgeon General. The data showed it was actually a much bigger issue for younger generations, millennials for Gen Z, which is kind of ironic, that were more digitally connected via TikTok and Facebook and Instagram and all, you know, choose your favorite tool. And yet, as human beings, we're more disconnected than ever before, even though we're living closer than ever before as well. So we kind of saw an opportunity not only to deliver that sense of strong community that residents and people crave, but also to help multifamily owners drive better outcomes, whether it be retention, whether it be occupancy, and ultimately driving better property value. So that was really the Genesis point for Kobo and that mission's never changed. We really want to empower everyone to feel like they belong wherever they live and help property owners deliver, you know, outstanding results to their clients in that process.

SPEAKER_04 2:53

That's incredible. Tell us. Um, so first of all, you know, we were talking a little bit about the show. I have two boys, and you know, so I was like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna start crying when you tell me that the product was inspired by your mom. So it's a wonderful story. Um, tell us a little bit more about how Kobo accomplishes what you just told us.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Yeah, so a lot of what we focus on is basically helping properties drive occupancy in creative ways. So we're hearing a lot these days, and frankly, before, like occupancy is top of mind. There's a lot of supply being delivered in many markets. Frankly, most markets at this point, you know, everyone's competing in the same places with Google Ads and PPC and ILS and brokers and locators, depending on the market. And it's getting expensive, right? And we found there's a much better way to drive occupancy, which is actually literally in all of your communities, it's your residents. So what Kobu does is build a really strong sense of community, a ton of engagement among residents. That's really where we uniquely focus in conjunction with whatever PMS you're using, whether it's Yardi, and Trata, et cetera, we can integrate. And basically what we do is we build this engaged community asset. And then what we find is what we can do is drive a lot of outcomes that drive occupancy for the property. So we drive double or triple the referral volume in a couple of interesting ways just to get more of those, which we can have a whole episode on referrals. We've learned a lot about referrals, and you know, frankly, like how today they're not a huge portion of where leases come from, for most properties at least. So that's kind of one portion. Two is we found a lot of that user-generated content, that lifestyle content, can really help paint a picture of why prospects choose living in your property. So what we find is when we put that content on websites, we can drive much higher conversion. So usually two, two to three times higher conversion. The third piece is we can drive a lot of Google reviews that help your property get found, you know, both through SEO as well as through uh through GEO, which we can talk about as well. And the fourth is what we find is that engagement only drives the other occupancy boosting benefits, it actually we find is really, really strongly linked to retention outcomes. So whenever we've done these analyses and we're doing a lot of them, we see anywhere between about seven to twenty-five percent higher retention outcomes or renewal outcomes among those that engage with their neighbors. That kind of old adage in multifamily, if you have one friend or two friends in your building, you're much more likely to stay. Like we have absolutely see that play on the data. So that's kind of how we think about attracting, engaging, and retaining as a full life cycle.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Okay, can I can I let me ask a question here? Because on new properties in class Alux, you know, Manhattan, Lower Manhattan, let's say with your mom, mom's case, easy to generate this content, easy for these for to come in and get the residents involved. What do you say to the operators that have smaller communities with not as many amenities? How can your product help or how can we help engage with our residents there? Is it just straight an event play and try to get people to meet each other? Can your product work on smaller communities with less amenities? Let's dive into that a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

It's a great question, Chris. And we always hear like, hey, is there particular regions do better in the Midwest, the West, the Southeast, you know, Manhattan? And it's interesting to hear. Um, and that what we find, just to be very frank, in the data is it's actually more of a size variable rather than like the amenities, whether than whether it being Manhattan or Dallas, like that is much less, frankly, that doesn't show up really in the data whatsoever. It's the size of the property we found. And the reason that is, Chris, is it builds the network effect. So one of the ways that we drive the engagement is enabling people to find last-minute dog sitters, to find you know, book club enthusiasts, to get help from their neighbors. Everything on KOBU is is fully moderated 24-7. So we have AI and a team of humans that make sure everyone's playing nice and abiding by the code of conduct and not bashing the property. All that's fully done 24-7. However, to build that engagement, we find there needs to be a certain critical mass of people there. You're much more likely to get help on a last-minute dog walking request if you have more neighbors, right? If you have 40 people that live in the community with you, it's just a lower likelihood of success. For us, we found 200 plus units tends to be that tipping point where you can drive really robust engagement, above that, even more. Below that, it's much less likely probabilities. So we found, frankly, size more so than like which amenities you know exist in the communities versus um where they are. We have properties across 37 states, 85 cities. So it's our communities in Indianapolis don't perform any better than our communities in Dallas versus our communities in Portland and Tampa. Like it's really, it's really the size is one of the biggest variables. And events we found do help, Chris, to your point. And we could certainly talk about you know, ways that we've seen communities get creative in terms of building that strong sense of community. I think the short answer is you don't have to spend a ton of money to do it, right? I would say yes, people appreciate free food and free drink and ornate things. That's wonderful, but you definitely do not have to do that. Build a great sense of community that you can leverage to kind of achieve your outcomes.

SPEAKER_01 7:31

Where do you get your data from? Is it just from the actual users or do you have different sources of data that you're pulling from?

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Most of the data I just referenced was from the KOBU first-party data. So we basically look at where do we see the highest outcomes in terms of leases generated, in terms of retention outcomes, in terms of Google reviews, in terms of referrals, all that stuff. That's what I was just referring to. But we do try to combine that with other data in terms of giving insight to our clients. So we use we've used in the past Hello Data, which is an amazing product. Uh I don't know if you guys know Mark, but a wonderful uh you guys are a user of it. Nice. Yeah, I'm a user. Love hello data. Yeah, but the data reference was more for the co who kind of first party data. Yeah, yeah, and I think I cut you off.

SPEAKER_01 8:08

You had a question.

SPEAKER_04 8:09

Yeah, you did. No. So I'm like, yeah, but that was like three minutes ago. So I don't remember. Now, how is this basically like it's like a like a social media app or like a place for like individual residents to connect? Is it a message? Like tell explain the interface. Like if I'm a resident, what am I what am I doing in your environment?

SPEAKER_00 8:32

Yeah, so from a resident perspective, it's an opt-in platform, an app, right? For residents to be able to engage with neighbors that specifically live in their apartment community. So think of it as like next door just for your apartment community, that's fully moderated. So definitely not nowhere near as spicy as next door if anyone uses next door. I love next door, but very different purpose. Um and one more.

SPEAKER_05 8:52

I think I came here for the comments. That is all next door is.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

There is not spicy content, as we'll call it in in Kobo. Uh look, it's very important to make sure that there's a really strong um community that has you know a code of conduct that that we kind of make sure is is there and people kind of people don't want that directly where they live, we've learned. Um, but they do want a great place to kind of engage with neighbors, help neighbors, get resources, ask questions of neighbors, etc. It's fascinating to see the personality of each community come out. And from there, they're able to do all those things, right? They're able to create a book club, they're able to create a dog group, a hiking group. Again, every community is different. It's a marketplace, buy sell trade. Um, they're able to kind of just get help from neighbors, right? There's a mm-hmm, a full chat tab that enables them to you know ask and request for help. And then today this integrates with the PMS systems. We're also working on ways to directly embed those in the uh actual portals where residents live today. So there's a lot of exciting things coming there. We're very big believers in deep integration. So uh hopefully some exciting announcements to come in that regard soon.

SPEAKER_04 10:39

No, that is really wonderful. And you're making me think too, like we just went through a process recently with one of our properties where uh we were doing a brand refresh. And so one of the elements of that was to really find out the brand of the community from the residents. Like, what did they really love about the community? And so we went in and we did an old-fashioned um focus group, right? Where we bought lunch and sat down and asked questions. And so you're making me think um, you know, exactly what you're talking about, like all of a sudden the life of the community really coming through. Um, it's almost like the you understand why people love living there and you're really able to kind of if you haven't defined a brand for the community from a marketing standpoint, really able to use that data to to then attract additional residents. So I a light bulb just went off um, you know, based on a project we did earlier this year. So that sounds really neat.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

Great point, and I think you learned so much from your residents. There's so much valuable data and insight, and you can make the experience so much stronger, yes, for current residents. But to your point, that can really shine to those that don't yet live in your community, and then you can really personalize the experience that that maybe those prospects are looking for. And they're the answers are right right in front of you, but sometimes they're hard to hard to get.

SPEAKER_04 11:53

Yeah, they're hard to get, or you know, you have pressure of like, you know, I know the old joke of using luxury all the time and kind of luxury is, you know, and I think sometimes too there's this idea of like, well, you know, who's your target audience? Anyone that wants an apartment. That's not true. Like that's literally not true. But sometimes I think as marketers, we have a hard time connecting like the heart of the community with residents that would actually or prospects that would actually want to live there. So again, it sounds like you're you're giving us data that would would make that process easier.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

Well, I love and it sounds like it's user-generated when it's in there. And so like the residents kind of figure out what everybody at the community likes, or you can, you know, figure out which group you're in the walking club or the book club, or you like wine and you want to talk about wine or bourbon or vodka, whatever, tequila. Um, maybe walk a dog and have a dog walking group. Like that's really popular in my community. Um, we have like five or six families that walk dogs in the morning together. Uh, we did it through our community Facebook, uh, which is a little different in the in the housing world, but really great idea. And then I'm assuming we talked about reviews. So you tie this into reviews, people are happier. They're gonna talk about these clubs that they're part of, which then also is unique and you can promote. And to your point, now all of a sudden we have a book club, we have a walking club, our residents run these events. It's not anything to do with the corporation, so it's not marketing telling you anything, it's our residents that are living there, right? And so uh they're probably saying that in the reviews. Is that correct, Ben? Just out there and and leaving those reviews, right?

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Absolutely. I think yeah, what we find is like residents that are unhappy, like you never have to ask them. They're gonna write those reviews, unfortunately. And and and obviously it's only one part of the experience. There's so many residents in your communities that love living there and frankly just aren't gonna write a review because they're they're usually there's no time to, or you know, it's hard, etc. So we basically developed an algorithm within the Kobo platform where we're inviting residents based on their engagement. Maybe they found a dog set, I mean they got you know some help from a neighbor, maybe they joined a you know, a family group, whatever it was. Those are great moments for us to ask them to write a review, fully you know aligned with Google's policies, TCP, all that stuff. Um, and just gives them a reason and with one click of a button to write a review. There's no incentive, like there's never any like you obviously can't incentivize in that way. And we find like residents write great reviews and they can write whatever they want to write. There's no like you can't review gate. I think our average star rating is about 4.8, 4.7, 4.8, depending on the month. So mostly five, some fours, and lots of content. So they usually give like three, four sentences on why they like live in there, which frankly is more important to a prospect than someone gave a five star. I don't really know why it's a five star, but that's subacy one aspect.

SPEAKER_04 14:34

But this is so go ahead, yeah. I think this is interesting too because um it's giving a way for residents can to connect, but it's taking, and I don't mean this in a bad way, but I I think sometimes site staff has to balance a lot. And so resident engagement or resident satisfaction or events or you know, consistency in those things, it it doesn't always happen. And so you're giving owners, operators, third-party managers a way to create community in their communities without them having to have staff to support building community. And so I think that that's am I understanding that correctly?

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah, totally. Like you might do one event a month, like great, that's awesome. How do we then drive much more around that? So we find you know, that's kind of what happens. You put you do your event, great, we can help get people there, we can help people excited about it, whatever. But what we can do on top of that is enable residents to kind of bear some of the load, as you said, Anne, in terms of building a community, starting their own book club, engaging, helping neighbors, and building that kind of neighborly feel. And we find is yes, it can drive Google reviews, it can drive referrals, which we can certainly talk about those areas. The piece that we're seeing, and I think with the shift towards AI search and all these different areas is the rise of authenticity, right? Where we we've spoken, we've got at this point over 100,000 homes across the country. More and more conversations we have with residents in terms of understanding how they end up deciding where to live. A lot of them tell us they basically look obviously at a price they want to pay, a location they want to be, obviously, those are not negotiable, they need a two-bedroom, whatever that is, those are non-negotiable. And what they tell us these days, especially with more options, they usually will whittle their search down to three finalists in that way. And when we ask them how they went from the three finalists that they can choose to live to the one where they actually sign that lease, they tell us it's like a feeling or it's a vibe or some sort of gut instinct, which makes sense. Obviously, it's a very personal decision where you live, it's it's kind of highly subjective in that way. And when we ask them like how they evaluate that, yes, some of them go to Google reviews, which don't fully tell you the picture, right? It's kind of you got to parse to it. A lot of them like try to talk to a friend or a friend, which usually is not available, especially if you're new to a city or if it's a new property. And we basically find like they're looking for that, like how happy will I be living there? Question. And it's very hard to answer that today. So a lot of what we're starting to do is really showcase that on a property website directly where a prospect is spending time. And what we're finding is it's it's really driving conversion. So today on average, it's about 2.3 times higher conversion among those that see that kind of lifestyle content that showcases how they'll feel when they live there. It's a very interesting perspective. And that's kind of today, we very much see with the role of AI search and a lot of kind of data being more at your fingertips in terms of price, availability, et cetera. We think that kind of qualitative feel variable would become more and more important.

SPEAKER_04 17:22

That that's really interesting. How are you ensuring that those? So this is something I've been thinking about recently. So I'm sorry, but um, how do you ensure that those feelings that are being like how how are you seeing the properties make the connection of the feeling that they might the prospect reads all these things, they get a feeling about the property, and then how are you seeing like successful properties making sure that feeling exists when the prospect goes to tour so that there's not a disconnect between what they're seeing online and um and what they're experiencing?

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Yeah, I think there's a couple of components to it. So one is kind of the curation at the front end, so that's kind of something you know we do directly for the property, so it's not like again to your point. I started my current leasing. Like there's so many hats your site teams are wearing. If you give them one more thing to do, it's just it's not gonna happen in the world.

SPEAKER_02 18:16

Too much.

SPEAKER_00 18:17

Too much, there's way too much going on. And that's kind of one piece of curation. And two is like, look, you know, we we tend to find communities that invest in building that strong sense of community. Like the the feeling is not only available on the website and kind of showcasing when we curate this content for the site, but um, there really is apparent kind of in the site staff. So I think there is an element of like a cultural alignment around resident experience or resident satisfaction that I think a lot of our clients share. And I think frankly, it exists in different ways. Different groups use different nomenclature and use different playbooks and different strategies. But yeah, I think to your point, and like that definitely also has to be apparent in the kind of touring experience, the actual visit experience. And actually, in that research, when we spoke to a lot of our our residents who turned into residents, they told us like the main way they actually get a vibe sense or kind of feeling today is their interactions with the site. It makes you everyone knows it, it makes such a big difference. So it 100% has to be there. It's not a replacement for that. And if anything, you know, you really have to like have it be a great experience kind of through and through. So I think a lot of technologies can help with that, can make sure responsiveness is there, at least a lot of our clients use at least as well. And the minute was just on the podcast. So I think there's technologies you can use, but ultimately for face-to-face with somebody, you know, being uh being available, being fully present, kind of answering questions and being patient, I think is you know, at least some of the basics that are really important.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

You're really speaking my language, Ben, because I'm trying to create this vibe right now with my content. I am really trying to get away from resort and luxury and all the other things. Yeah. Because a pool is a pool, and not every pool is a resort-style pool. It's just not. Um, and so I I mean, I'm just you're really resonating with the marketing that I'm trying to do. You keep saying or you keep mentioning that you're curating this content. What are you doing? Are you using AI to pull this data out? And how are you putting it on the website? How are you making sure that these you know longer tail searches are being found in AI because people search way differently in AI than they do in Google? I mean, it's like, I want a two-bedroom, you're my favorite coffee shop that likes dogs. You know, it's like very conversational, right? It's not like a few keywords, it's conversational. So, how are you curating that data and how are you getting it out there to help you in search?

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Yeah, it's a great point. So, you know, let's say you use a Joanet website or Yarty or in Trata, whatever your website provider is, we basically create a new tab or kind of section to it called lifestyle. Usually it's between um your gallery and you know, call it floor plans. Obviously, every site's a little bit different. You can call it whatever you want to call it. Some properties, we have one that calls it vibes at Nolly, they're in Tepe, Arizona, so a younger demographic. Some people call it, you know, the live grandscape experience one of our communities in Dallas. Every community is different, right? So you can kind of personalize that the colors, the fonts, all that stuff matches to your point on how we're curating it. Today it's a combination of AI that's kind of fully modern everything. And the second piece, we do have a team of humans that are curating us. We found, you know, particularly that things that live on your website, you want to have an extra kind of layer of confidence and QA, if you will, of anything that goes there. It's obviously a very, very visible place. So we have a team of humans that literally does that once a month to keep it fresh. And the way we've built the content blocks is such that it's crawlable by algorithms. So it should be able to be found by whatever Google algorithms in the future as well, AI search, things of that nature, as more and more prospects and renters are looking at perplexity and claw and chat GPT and just the usage rates are obviously incredible and growing faster and faster. So, what we're basically enabling properties to do is answer those questions. When someone says, Hey, I love being outside and I have two dogs and I want to be in a very outdoorsy area. Where should I live? Where are the best apartment buildings in Austin? Like, you know, a resort style pool might not be directly what kind of answers that question, right? Showcasing content that brings them a little bit closer to that will help.

SPEAKER_01 22:02

I really like that. Do you have any data? I'm just curious. Ann and I have talked a lot about this when we've talked about websites and time on site and what people are looking at. And you know, a lot of times it's homepage and price, floor plan, obviously, as you mentioned, kind of deal breaker. Yep. Do you know how long people are starting to use these lifestyle pages? Are you tracking how much time people are actually spending on these pages? Maybe that gives a sense to those listening that want to try it, like I do in Ann. I think Ann's going down the top as well, that it really does make a difference. And you know, they're not skipping over that page like they would maybe a different gallery per se or something like that.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

Yeah. So what we find, again, every site's different, but by far, the number one is floor plans. Like floor plans is is. Is basically every single time we look at analytics and Google Analytics, we see that being number one. Two is usually gallery, depends on um the site. But again, that usually tends to be number two. Three can be a jump ball based on what the what the site offers. But usually the Koku lifestyle content is either number three or number four on the website. It's certainly way higher than the neighborhood page where we see a lot of properties. Still have those. Look, they're not they're not unhelpful, but usually we're finding prospects when we talk to them, we're looking at different ways to assess the neighborhood. And there's a lot of kind of tools at their at their fingertips to be able to assess that component. So usually it's the third or fourth highest uh component. And I would say what you're finding is what we do in Google Analytics, for instance, we create two audiences, those that go to the website that don't visit this lifestyle content, the user-generated content, and those that do. And we look at the actual outcome differences towards whatever the key action is. So the key action usually is you know, it's a scheduling a tour or submitting an application. Again, every site's a little different, every group's a little different in terms of how they define those key actions. But that's how we're looking at the conversion rate differences. And the national average we're seeing today is about 2.3 times higher. In some cases, it's as high as six times higher. So it's interesting. Every site, every market is a little bit different, but that's we find the kind of tight bend. And it's a very interesting, consistent increase pattern, which is always something we look for. It's not like, hey, in some cases it's zero, in some cases it's a lot. It's like pretty consistently in that band. And that kind of shows us and corroborates a lot of the just like actual conversations we have with many of our prospects that turned into residents around how they went through that process.

SPEAKER_04 24:11

That's really interesting too, because you know, to optimize a website to be able to increase conversion rate, so from like visits to leads, let's say an average site is like three percent. I'm not gonna be able to do math, but like to five, three percent. What so all of a sudden, if you're increasing to five percent because of this content, this lifestyle content page, like if you look across at that across an entire portfolio, all of a sudden, I mean, uh a marketer could do the math and say, okay, you know, my websites create this many leads and they turn into this many leases. And if I'm increasing my conversion rate, then in theory, I am gonna be able to create this much more revenue because you can make assumptions about your average, you know, 12-month lease value based on your average rent across your portfolio and everything. I mean, so this is like a very with the data you gave us about an increase in conversion rates, this all of a sudden becomes a very easy thing for a marketer or operator, you know, whoever is interested in in implementing this type of strategy, it it becomes a very easy math problem of like this is why it's worthwhile, because you literally could show a theoretical increase in revenue across a portfolio based on a lifestyle page strategy.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Absolutely. No, it's it's incredible. That was like very much. You are spot on that. It's highly measurable.

SPEAKER_04 25:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 25:42

And it's easy like now though. Yeah, no, because I think sometimes when you're like when you're like, oh, I'm gonna increase resident feelings, right? Like, what does that mean? Like that means nothing. But if you're like, I'm gonna increase, you know, like you said, numbers, resident satisfaction, renewal rates, and by the way, we can use this content to put on websites, increase conversion rates, get more revenue, like then it becomes a conversation that marketers can have with operations, with asset managers. Like it becomes like a scalable, kind of unified conversation. So it's great, it's great that you guys have all of this data internally to help.

SPEAKER_01 26:22

But on top of all of it, too, you're creating this first experience for these prospects, whatever part of the funnel they're in. And they when they walk in, yeah, I've been saying this a lot, like in today's world, if you get somebody to walk in, you've done something right. But with with this tool, with a vibe page, lifestyle page, you're giving everything they need, you're answering all of their questions before they walk in. When they're walking in, you're right, they're making sure that the staff is matching the vibe and that they can feel comfortable living there and that the marketing, the beautiful marketing photos that we're all doing match what they've seen, or the apartment you know, looks like what they've seen, or it'll work for them. But I really like this, and it I think it's I think it's a new way we need to go. I think we need to stop being so cookie-cutter and really figure out the brand of each of our communities and bring that to life. And you're huge on branding, and yes, it's it's important for the management company to be branded, but it's also important for each community to have its own feeling because they're all different. They all have different resonance, they all have different demographics, they all offer something different and why people choose to live there for whatever that reason is.

SPEAKER_04 27:31

Yeah, they do. And right now, gathering that data is made easy in some cases. Like there are ways where it's there are some platforms where it's aggregated, you know, like the reputation.com, if you're, you know, getting reviews and surveys and all that, like there is a place where that data is aggregated. But I think that, you know, the data that you're talking about with in KOBU adds it's all of a sudden a scalable way to get brand information about individual properties on a portfolio level. Because what I talked about before, doing focus groups is amazing, but it's not scalable. I mean, like that's it's time commitment heavy. You have to find the residents you want, you got to buy them lunch, you have to, you know, all of a sudden it's like six hours worth of time times a hundred communities. It becomes a lot. So I like that too, that it's like real information, but but scalable and and already aggregated for you.

SPEAKER_00 28:29

Totally. I think what you kind of mentioned, and like the average conversion rate websites around 3%. We've seen you know two to four percent kind of be the range. And yeah, we hear a lot of asset managers and marketers these days saying, hey, I need more traffic, I need more people coming to my sites and need to pay for that platinum tier, whatever the tier is. And the reality is you have thousands of people coming to your websites. I mean, it could be more depending on the market, but every single month. So the difference of going from call it 2.5% conversion to going to four or five percent conversion, it's really consequential. Like your marketing is probably working. The question is, how do you get more leverage to get more of them to actually convert into tours, into applications, and then then kind of go through your process. They actually don't visit your site or then you know, don't kind of take that action from there. You're not gonna, that's not gonna turn into a lease. So we found like giving leverage to marketers to help them get more bang for their buck from whatever marketing spend they have today. And by the way, maybe actually spend less money in the future, right? Maybe go from spending$4,000 a month on DaraSAPharmist.com that's going up to maybe spending$3,000, maybe less, right? And suddenly that then flows directly down to the bottom line and your occupancy continues to grow towards your goal. So that's kind of what we're thinking through, especially as the world is shifting towards this direction. The one thing I will mention that's kind of more in the experimental phase right now, but we're seeing some really interesting, compelling results have not shared externally, but we're also seeing that kind of user-generated lifestyle vibe content is very impactful in the actual tour to lease conversion process as well. So we're integrating directly with CRMs that are sending follow-up notes. We're finding on average about two times how conversion.

SPEAKER_04 30:01

Oh, so interesting. So that user-generated content is being put into automated follow-ups, basically. Is that what am I understanding that?

SPEAKER_00 30:09

And then follow-ups that are that are tailored. So like, hey, last week 10 neighbors came together to celebrate this dog's birthday and like showcasing examples of it. Sorry, lost my voice in a second. That's okay. So passionate about this documentary.

SPEAKER_05 30:21

So exciting. Yeah, I know.

SPEAKER_01 30:23

Here's what's here's what's great though, and he's he's bringing in the prospects, right? He's helping to bring in the prospects with all of this data, and then he's closing the back door too, which we all struggle with. And so if you close the back door and you get a let's say you get a one percent boost on your incoming conversions, all of a sudden it's a lot less leases you need, a lot less spend. I mean, it really does when you can get them in the door and close the close the other side, then you're really hitting on all all cylinders with your marketing we've learned.

SPEAKER_04 30:52

No, I was gonna say, I mean, I'd much rather op make sure that all of our marketing channels are optimized as much as possible than ask for more money. I mean, yep, all day, all day. I mean, I think I I think that's kind of a general marketer's theme, is like we actually don't want to spend more money, we just want to make sure everything's working properly.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

Especially now when things are getting more and more competitive and there's many budgets are actually getting tighter, right? On top of that, so you have to get extra creative. And Chris, to your point around backdoor, front door. We usually, and when I was on site, I heard this like there's sometimes not a fight, but like a tension between or a trade-off between what you do to support the front door and the back door. We've learned it's actually not like what you do to drive the front door actually can significantly increase the backdoor, you know, retention rate. So it's like not an either or if anything, it's it's very much an end.

SPEAKER_01 31:41

We we talked a lot about this at my company and we we ran. I know not everybody's in a contest, but I love it, and I do a belt. We did a contest on the movement experience because that first impression on moving experience can set the tone for the rest, absolutely your tenancy. And if you have a bad experience when you move in, you don't really forget it. Uh, and so to your point, it really they really do go together. Taking care of our residents is what we do. We want to do that, we want to take their maintenance, we want them to have good experiences. We just have a lot. I mean, you've been on site, you know, our teams have a lot that they have to deal with and a lot that they have to manage. And I think uh one of the favorite quotes I have is you know, one of my favorite managers I've worked with, you know, they they it depends on what hat they're gonna wear that day. Are they a psychologist? Are they a leaser? Are they the manager of the property? Are they you know, because they have residents coming in just on, you know, the whole thing. And so any tool that we can use to help us create a better experience, no matter what that is, and then also get some content out of it, uh, as I'm an SEO geek, and you can get some content that's different than your competitors, and to me, it's a win-win-win.

SPEAKER_00 32:50

I mean, more. I mean, I think that is that is the future of where you know search is heading, right? And I think as marketers, you know, we have to be at the at the leading edge of it. And you know, these things tend to happen pretty fast, is what we find. And sure, you know, the digital transformation happened over a period of years or decades, but it seems like this era of AI, you know, in terms of consumer behavior is I mean, 800,000 monthly active users on ChatGPT, like that is a that's sorry, 800 million. Sorry, that's almost a billion active users and growing. It's not it's not slowing down anytime soon, it doesn't seem like yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:25

The percentage is small overall, it's still at 1%-ish of overall, maybe less. I mean, the traffic to our website still is less than 1%, but you're right, the momentum around it um is huge. Although I'm kind of laughing because um we we've been almost talking about AI search so much that now we're getting questions like, why isn't my property showing up in AI search? And we're like, that's awesome, but darn it, we're not ready.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

Total wild.

SPEAKER_05 33:56

Um, so I'm kind of like walking it back, like, shh, let's not talk about AI search. No, I'm just kidding.

SPEAKER_00 34:01

Like, there's no like one definitive answer. Like, hey, everyone's like, how do I win the AEO GEO space? Like, there's no one direct playbook that's gonna do it. I think the reality is, you know, Chris, to your point, like a lot of the stuff that's helping SEO will probably help GEO and AEO, right? Yeah, however, it'll be different, right? A lot of it'd be more earned, a lot of be more authentic. Like a lot of these you know, blog posts that maybe fed SEO in the past may not directly you know be as impactful for GEO. But for instance, things like Reddit.com, right, where users user generated content, again, people are talking, and hey, I live in Columbus, what do you guys think about this apartment community? Like that's going to be found very quickly. And Reddit just so happens to have a data partnership with the major AI search platforms. So you know, suddenly you're starting to see this user-generated content sort of show up directly where Prospects are looking. So that one thread that like happened four years or whatever, a year ago on Reddit about your property, like it matters, right? What people are saying matters.

SPEAKER_04 34:57

It does matter. And I think Reddit's a great example too, because you can't, I think marketers have tried hard to figure out a Reddit strategy. How do I get residents to talk about Reddit, or you know, to talk about my property on Reddit in a natural way? And it's almost like, I'm sure there is a way. I'm not saying like by all means, I will keep thinking about it and keep trying. But I think that, you know, when you're going back to this idea of like authentic, unbought conversation, Reddit is a perfect example of that because users go and they have conversations there and they're they're they're rarely influenced by brands to go there and start the conversation. However, the conversations are started because consumers have been influenced by the brands through their interactions with them. But it's kind of like then at that point out of the brand's control. Um I don't know. So it's it's interesting, which again just comes back to the point of like give your customers a great experience and they will have great conversations about it.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

It's the basics, right? Like I think we talk a lot about getting back to the base, it will be it will pay dividends, especially in this world where it's really hard to hide behind, you know, public comment. Like that this is gonna be out there, right? Especially in like Reddit and places like that. Build an amazing experience, you know, be great at maintenance tickets, all these areas that we know are are critical, and that will pay dividends in terms of actually getting more people in the front door and obviously keeping them you know from leaving the back door too. This has been great.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

What a fun conversation we're having. Time is flying, man. As always.

SPEAKER_04 36:29

I'm sad, but I have another I have two, I have two more questions. They're not they're related to what we're talking about, but not but what like I'm asking this to both of you. What are like, you know, we're talking about brand experiences. What are like two of your favorite brands just like to interact with in general?

SPEAKER_00 36:48

I mean Chris, I'll let you go first.

SPEAKER_04 36:50

I know, sorry, curveball. I just yeah, I was thinking about like anyway.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

Well, um, I mean, my first answer is gonna be boring. Um, I love Apple, and um, you know, we're an Apple household, and I'm always buying Apple stuff. Um, and so it's a brand that I love, it's a brand that I trust. I think that's the most the biggest piece for me when I'm thinking about a brand um that I love. And the next uh this is bougie, but um, I'm a Four Seasons fan, and so that's that's one of my favorite brands. And I just I like the experience of when we stay there, you know, we're lucky enough to be able to do that, and um, you know, it's a great, it's a great experience for my family and I they really take care of you. I mean, funny story, we were just recently we're in a hotel, my one of my youngest had a cough, and I was like, Hey, we need a humidifier, boom, it was in our room. We just took a shot in the dark, but yeah, they they made it happen. That's a make it easy button. So those are my two two brands right now that I'm focused on.

SPEAKER_02 37:47

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

It's awesome. Yeah, no, they they kind of live that uh golden rule, right? Do unto others as you want to be done to yourself. I think it's a really powerful, I believe it's like part of their culture and a storied experience. I would say the two that come to mind for me. And the first one, it's kind of more poignant recently, is a company called Chewy.com. They do um, you know, pet care and pet supply online. Yeah, and their customer service is is incredible, right? The responsiveness is is first rate, the just attention to detail is phenomenal, like the relatability as a kind of we have we had two dogs, and unfortunately, one of them passed away about seven months ago, which is never easy. And just the amount of kind of grace and respect and just like attention to human detail that we got through that, you know, that they sent a letter of condolences. We had to return some food. They were super, super helpful with all of that. And you know, they they kind of embraced customer centricity, I would say, to the max. Um second is a is an interesting example that I've been using a lot more recently. I really love the experience and kind of their brand promise of delivering time and delivering kind of speed of savings of kind of you know, helping busy individuals like get more done is perplexity. So they're an AI search company, they they kind of functionally might replace Google in some ways, but they're building all these tools that just like help save me time, right? So they're able to like help respond to you know a portion of my emails that are a little more um, you know, kind of like scheduling times, for instance. What else? It's just like fascinating, like the features that they're the new browser that came out that's like helping me not like go between a bunch of different you know places. So it's just like helping me deliver on you know what I want to do, and they're kind of helping just like give not superpowers, but just like give time savings back in my day, and I appreciate it, right? Like what's the most valuable thing you have is time, right? Get to spend more time with my son, I get to spend more time with my wife around work. Like it's really important.

SPEAKER_04 39:31

That's really cool. Yeah, there's nothing worse than spending time like those emails back and forth scheduling and stuff like that, like to be able to get time back to do something else's. That's really cool. Um, okay. Ben, is there anything else you want to tell us before I ask my last curveball question?

SPEAKER_00 39:49

No, look, I think I think the question you asked answer great question, like what brands do you love? And I'm actually currently reading a book called Winning on Purpose by Fred Reiheld. He was the one that invented the NPS Net Promoter Score system. And it's a fascinating read. I mean, midway through it, so I definitely can't share that much of a through it, but it really kind of helps you understand like when you build incredible brand equity and satisfaction scores and truly like are able to measure it, these are the some of the storied brands that that you know. I would, I think, Chris, I believe four seasons came up in the book, whereas one of the examples of in the hospitality sector among the highest MPS scores, and they are obviously built a storied brand that you know people love, like you, right? So I think in multifamily that 100%, if anything, applies even more. It's probably the most personal space where we you know spend time or the most time and probably the most personal decision we'll ever make, right, in terms of where we choose to live. So I think as multifamily marketers, as multifamily leaders, I think we have such an opportunity not only to drive better outcomes for our clients, for owners, but also you know, build a great experience that their residents you know want to live in that we should be proud of. We literally could impact like millions of residents human lives every single day. Why? It's an incredible opportunity, right?

SPEAKER_01 40:57

I love providing housing. It's it's really rewarding that we can be in an industry that helps people find a place to live. And it's it's rewarding to be part of that. Can I ask a question, Ann, before you do your last curveball? Because I do. We we talked about a lot today, Ben. What do you tell the audience that needs to get what if you know they may not be able to use your technology or other technologies out there? But what can they start doing today to help move the needle on any of the things that we talked about? I mean, I know you you talk about reviews, but is there something they can do with content? Is there something they can do with their interactions? Of course, go look up, go look up Kobu and see if that's a fit for you too. That's part of it. But um, maybe you have some advice for our listeners.

SPEAKER_00 41:43

Yeah, I would say whatever way you're able to, not being afraid of residents engaging with their neighbors, I think is the first place. Like I think you'll learn so much from that interaction. Obviously, do it in a way that's that's controlled, that's moderated, that's that's kind of not like free form, like just have it, you know, that you can use. There's so many different free tools you can use, whether it's a Facebook group, whether it's a Slack group, whether it's WhatsApp, an old-fashioned email list, a both whatever it is. I would say don't be afraid of that conversation. Yes, like moderation is important, but very rarely does you actually need to use moderation we found in the data. And you will learn so much from that interaction, and that will A help you build a better community, B, help you uncover new strategies that might help you outperform your peers or outperform your competitors in that particular market. And C, like it will make your work so much more fun, too. Like to see that stuff happen every single day is incredibly, incredibly heartwarming. Like the amount of examples we saw over the past three days was just Halloween of like neighbors being there for each other and like, hey, we didn't have you know trick-or-treating, like it's incredible, right? Like it just makes your work so much more gratifying to be a part of that. And you, you, as both the marketer, as the property manager, as the asset manager, you are certainly part of the community and a critical part of the community. So I would say, like, don't be afraid of residents engaging with the neighbors. It can actually drive a lot of outcomes for you. There are many different tools, a lot of which are free, you can use to do that. And yeah, it'll help help you achieve your outcomes that you want, your goals. Thanks, Ben. That was great.

SPEAKER_01 43:04

I think that was really good insight.

SPEAKER_04 43:05

Yeah. No, this was wonderful. Thank you. You know, I what I love about this podcast um is a lot, but I think what's the most fun is we kind of go into a conversation with a general idea of what we're gonna talk about, right? And um, but it never ends up being exactly what we thought we were gonna talk about. And the conversation always ends up being so much more rewarding and rich and and and you know, has a lot of depth to it. And I think you've really brought um a lot of depth to this topic today. And so we can't thank you enough um for my last question. So I I was asking people like, do you think AI search engines are gonna replace Google? But Ben, you already said they were, so um, I'm basically so thank you.

SPEAKER_00 43:53

So um they're directly gonna replace it's gonna it's gonna shift a little bit. Google's gonna be part of that equation.

SPEAKER_05 43:58

I heard replace, um, but anyway.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

I think Google was late, was late. They didn't see this coming as fast as they did, but I think they're gonna have to pivot. Um and Google's gonna exist in some form, and it's not going away.

SPEAKER_04 44:13

Yeah, so anyway, here's my new, here's my new question. Since we're getting, you know, wonderfully, I am actually happy that we're getting questions about how properties um can rank in AI search. Um, but so I'm gonna ask each of you if you were gonna search for an apartment in your favorite AI search engine, what prompt would you use?

SPEAKER_00 44:33

That's a great question. So, do you want me to go first, Chris? Yeah, I want you to go first. Okay. So, what I would I have the context that I put in in Chat GPT of like, hey, who am I? You know, got a small kiddo. At home, I'm at a wife, we live in Boston. I would say, hey, based on what you know about me and based on all the data available online, please find me the best two-bedroom apartment in Boston where I can be healthy and happy and make sure my family is enjoying where they're living. I would probably make it more on like the goals I want to achieve, and then I would probably filter it based on like, hey, I want to pay$2,000 and I need a specific two-bedroom. I would probably put it first my goals and then like my constraints.

SPEAKER_04 45:12

Okay. I love it. Yeah. And you would probably, based on that, you would either maybe get more questions or it might start kind of like a soft list and be like, is this the direction that you're looking at? Or should I? So it would guide you. I really that's interesting. I had never thought I like that a lot. The goals. All right, Chris.

SPEAKER_00 45:31

I would have it ask me like questions. Like if there are things you want to know, like interview me and ask the three questions, then give me the options you want. Sorry. Chris, go ahead. I'm serious.

SPEAKER_04 45:40

Literally, that's amazing. Okay. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 45:43

I just want the audience to know and did not prep us with these questions. These are really awkward. Yeah, no, it's good. Just so everybody knows. Like nobody has crowds. I I just want to say a couple of things. First, Zillow is trying to do this with some of their ideas that they talked about. Yes. Um, which I thought was super interesting with their Friday night vibe, is what they were calling it at the presentation. Of course, this is not sussed out, but the point of the presentation was that they are now looking at how are they going to serve content to their users with everything that they know about them, and just say, hey, you might like this place, swipe left or right or whatever. However, they're going to do it, hard it. And I think that that is how you're going to win in search moving forward. And of course, us as marketers need to figure out how we can make those lists. And we're not for everybody. My community is some of them, every community is different. And so we just need to cater to what that demographic is and not try to go to everybody anymore and just who wants, you know, and and really get specific. So I just wanted to mention that because Ben, I think that's starting to happen with your kind of your vibes and the way you're thinking about it. I want to caveat by saying I've been doing this for 20 years. My wife's in the industry. So I think we search just totally different. And I don't think that that's it's we all have our own bias. So Courtney and I, location is everything, and we were renters by choice for a very long time. It was all about location, and that's where my search started. So it was what apartments are on this area, and I would give it a very specific coordinate of where I wanted to be, and then we would look at price and we would go tour. And of course, this is you know, we haven't been renters now for 10 years, but you know, we would go and see everybody, we would do 10 shows, you know, we didn't care, we'd pack our whole day in and see everything that we could see. And that is that is how I would still search today because location to me is everything, and then I've I'll fit my budget into whatever apartment works. And of course, we got upselled, even though we're in the industry. We went in for a one. They're like, Oh, this one's great, but it's two bedrooms, got a great deal. You got to take it. Of course, we're like, Yeah, we need to take it, it's$25 more. Of course, why wouldn't we want more space? So yeah, I mean, it was it was perfect. I mean, it was like eight plus stuff, uh, hook, line, and tinker. But but for me, it's it location always trumped everything else, like it was where I wanted to be. Um, I think if I was searching today, Zillow would be a big part of that. Um, because you can look on the map, and then the reviews. I mean, the reviews are just I I've been I've been talking about reviews since I don't know, probably 2010. I was really early on it, and it's just crazy to me how important they become every year. They become more and more important, and now it's not even how many reviews, it's how fresh they are. Are you responding to them? What are people actually saying? I mean, I I just did this for another resort, not four seasons, but a nice resort. And I looked at it, I looked at the reviews. I looked what I do now is I do the newest one stars. What are people saying? Why are they what are the newest one stars, you know, at some of these things to kind of figure out what people are trying to say and then what's true, what isn't. Anyway, I gave you a very long answer, of course, because I'm passionate about this stuff, but that's and for me, it's always about location, so it's always going to be I need an apartment, and I don't care necessarily bedroom count. I need an apartment in this specific area. Um, show me what I can do, and then I'll I'll sift through and kind of figure it out. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 49:17

No, I love it. Can we uh can we flip the question out? You I'd love to hear your uh your chat, your uh chat GPT is prompt.

SPEAKER_04 49:23

Yeah, also your brands.

SPEAKER_00 49:25

You didn't tell us your brands either.

SPEAKER_04 49:26

I know, I got it. I like chili. Chili, I know. I have to send you. I know, I know, I don't forget. Um, no, it's right here. So actually, I have a random one. Um, my son, my younger son plays electric bass, and then we just bought him an electric guitar because he played bass for a couple he wanted to like expand, I guess. I don't know. And so there's this company called Sweetwater, and they sell instruments online, and I don't know anything about guitars, basses, any of the things, right? And so I kind of asked his instructor, like, hey, what do you think he should get? And then um, he told me, and then I went to Sweetwater, and then they just made it so easy for me to like find exactly what I needed for someone who doesn't know anything. You know, I felt really confident with my purchase. Uh, we had a problem with his base a couple years ago, where something with this, like, who even knows? I don't know. Literally, I like wrote to them and I was like, something's wrong. And they were like, send it back to us. And I sent it to them, and they sent us a brand new one. And honestly, I think we were the ones that screwed the base up and they didn't even care. They just like sent us a new one, and um, it would just was really, you know. So again, I've made two purchases from them and I had to make one return that maybe was our fault, and it just was a wonderful experience. And the emails they send to like confirm that your order is placed, they'll call you and ask if you have any questions about your order. I mean, just the customer service is unreal. Um, so that's one. And then I have like three others um that I like, but uh so we've been driving around a lot. So I like McDonald's a lot right now because of their app. So I basically pull into a McDonald's, pull open their app, find something that's on sale, click it, tell them the code, it pops up, they know my name, the points go in, and it's just like a really seamless experience. So I like the seamlessness of it, and I like that I'm like getting a deal because um even though I'm not, but I'm like so I'm cheap by nature, so I appreciate that. Um, and then how I would search in ChatGPT, I would do something similar, Ben, where basically like based on what you what you know about me, where should I live? And then because I want the very most basic, I like don't want to pre-tell it stuff, I want it to start asking me questions because I don't want to accidentally bias the results by saying something. So I'd rather it take me through a whole series of questions, and then at some point, if I'm like, then I can give it more information, but I would start at that. What do you based on what you know about me? Because I do use Chat GPT a lot, so um it does know me pr pretty well. Um, and that's it. But I appreciate this. I think your guys's brand questions and your answers about how you would start a search in ChatGPT, I think really just tie this conversation together nicely because we're talking about brand. We're talking about, you know, how to create communities that people love, how each of the communities exist for very different purposes. And I think all three of our answers being very different just showcases that you know there is a place to live for everyone, and it's our responsibility to you know connect our communities with our prospects in in the ways that matter to them most. So, episode successful, Ben, thank you so much for joining us. Um, to all of our listeners, thank you. Carlos, our producer, thank you so much. To Flamingo, our sponsor, thank you so much. And until next time, this has been the apartment department.